Server Outages Lead to Drop in Search Engine Rankings

A recent post on DigitalPoint proves the importance of forking over the cash for a dependable web hosting company as one member notes that after a 48 hour server outage, their sites dropped from their #1 or top ten positions:

About 2-3 of weeks or so ago our server was down for about two days… We were ranked #1 and top 10 on a bunch of relevant keywords. Our PR went up in the past month or so from a 4 to a 5 on a couple of pages on our site. This Monday I noticed we dropped of the radar on most rankings but 2 or 3 main ones where we dropped from #1 to #4 and #10.

One member replies :

Yes, definitely it will be a factor. If Google (or any other search robots) would not find the site they previously indexed, they might remove the URLs in the index database. If subsequent attempts yield success, it is reinstated, but could take time to get back to normal.

What are some ways a site owner can prevent the loss in rankings due to server outages?

1) Have a back-up plan with an alternative web hosting account at a different company. If your first host goes down, transfer DNS to the other host ASAP.

2) Be sure to backup your site on a regular basis in case you have to switch hosts and cannot download your site database or backup from your host/server which is out for the count.